Old Girls
by Danny Barefoot
Summary: Short character pieces on Rico, Henrietta, the girls and time. Do not own Gunslinger Girl, please read and reveiw.
1. New tricks

She was just too cute; that was all the 2nd Gen ever said. In any case, Petra was quite happy to let Rico take the chair by hers in the rec room, and chatter away.

"...and that time we went out together! You were amazing, Big Sis. Even Mr Giuseppe praised you!"

"He was too kind. Guiseppe's cyborg seemed unhappy with me, though..."

"Oh, 'Etta's just like that." Rico laughed, "She couldn't ever have distracted the targets like you, or tricked them so neatly into our ambush."

"Well, she hasn't had the same training as me...and that look in her eyes, she couldn't hide it." Petra absently lit a cigarette, blew a wobbly smoke ring. Rico stared at the glowing tip. "Maybe for some lolicon terrorists..."

"Don't! You're so pretty, Big Sis, and even Triela is more grown up than _me_...." Rico mournfully regarded her chest and arms. "So thin...I'm stronger than I look, though!" Petra laughed generously as Rico made a muscle with one arm.

"I'm sure our jails are full of Padinians who can attest to that."

"Mmm, lots. But Big Sis can't have had so many chances yet...you need practise!" Rico's enthusiasm was so touching, Petra couldn't think of refusing her; she knelt as Rico went up on one knee, and both girls rested their elbows on a coffee table. Her bright-nailed fingers encircled Rico's pink hand.

"Best of three?"

"Oh, no rules."

For minutes, the cyborgs locked eyes, movements small as on a tightening anchor chain. Petra's brow shone suddenly wet. By shaking inches her arm moved down, harder and harder into the table.

Petra smiled; Rico smiled back.

"Oo!" A crack had appeared in the table. As Rico's finger's tightened, Petra bit down on a moan of pain.

"You're hurting me. Could you please let go?" Rico simply beamed.

"Make me!" She caught Petra's fist and came over the table; quickly Rico was sitting on her adversary's stomach, squeezing both wrists with mechanical mercilessness. "Now try to get out!"

"*&$% that hurts! Just let go, you little..." Petra's legs trawled for leverage, "Who the $^£* you think you are...?"

"Mmm. I'm a girl. With a cybernetic body. I'm no good at lying, and even Henrietta can be more like a normal girl than me." Rico considered every syllable of spoken thought, as if it were entirely new, "My handler is Mr Jean. He says I should be his perfect weapon...if there's anything I can't do, he hates me. He says I'm worthless, I'm stupid, I was designed all wrong...I stick out. I can hide and make people like me, but you were made different, you're _better_..."

As Rico leaned into her face, Petra heaved her body like a snake's, crushing the lit cigarette she had kept between her teeth above Rico's nose. Tears sprang to her eyes, but her grip continued to tighten.

"I don't want to be useless. I don't want _him _to say I'm no use. I won't let you replace me..."

"I'm not going to replace, you okay? Jean isn't going to get another cyborg until you die."

After a few second, Rico dismounted from Petra, and quickly ran away.

* * *

An hour later, Petra kicked in the door of Rico's bedroom.

"I think a male gorilla would lay its head down somewhere with more style than _this_. After the room, we'll work on clothes, dear me–"

"Dresses?!"

"Do you see me wearing a dress? Jeans and a nice top can be _sexy_, even for a certain flat-chested psycho. Then the _hairstyle_, the _swearing_–walking on water probably comes after that, but we'll see; yeah, we'll see."

"Yes, Miss Petra!"


	2. Your Art

After the Hotel Villa Gadd hit, Rico had no reason to stop practicing the violin. Six months later she still didn't, but stopped anyway.

"You can't just stop; if you met that boy again next month..."

"I shot him. I thought you knew."

"That boy was…? What a horrid coincidence. Maybe some other instrument?"

"Mr Jean wouldn't buy me one. Anyway, I want to hear _you_ play."

Henrietta obliged with a blush. As Rico's skill had painfully improved, Henrietta's had grown freely. Her pain was in the playing–all her happiness and desire, in a story words were not made to tell. For as long as she played, Rico listened.

"You can do everything I can, but...hey, you like art don't you, Rico? If you asked Claes to teach you..." The advice was repaid with a hug and a faceful of squeal.

Two weeks later, Rico was enjoying drawing very much; Claes said that she had the eyes and hands for a certainty. Rico disliked nothing in what she drew; that might have been the problem. Everything was _pretty_. Claes and Henrietta were happy to look over her work at any time, but never asked her to bring out an old picture again. Rico spent a solid week in drawing Claes in the act of painting, watching the older girl lean into the canvas like Rapunzel at the window of her prison, hearing and seeing nothing in the present world. Rico finished, and it was a nice picture. Another week later she left an excellent nude couple resembling Jose and Henrietta (one from imagination, another from showertime memories) unfinished in a discarded sketchbook.

Jean had been hinting at a permanent alteration to her face without a rapid improvement to her mission performance, so Rico threw herself into training. It naturally gave her satisfaction, and although Jean was never pleased with her, she knew what she could do. Her kill count lagged behind, however, and her targets even escaped her. It was because she saw her own intentions, not the place they met the mind of the enemy; Jean put it that way as he pushing Rico into the shower, and turned the temp gauge to its lowest setting. She listened, and remembered.

* * *

It was an unhappy return to the Uffizi art gallery. Triela would be on the close engagement team; Rico shivered at the thought. From the window overlooking the entrance, she watched the passersby on the palazzo through her sights. The boys playing football against a wall, tussling and darting about. Rico watched as a short-haired boy scored in a fascinating way; then Jean had spoken; a van was flying over the palazzo, with human and mechanical screams.

It would swing left towards the gallery, level with the footballers the depression angle would be the best; her eye held the van and held, as the tiny ball came before it, the short-haired boy barrelling after–

Rico breathed out, luxuriantly. The van was on its side with three wrecked tires; the boy stood with his football, a 7.52 sized hole smoking by both his feet. By the time Rico and Jean had got down he had gone, leaving his football on the same spot. Gun hidden, Rico picked it up. She was disappointed the boy had left the ball when he'd almost lost his life for it.

Nothing had compelled Rico to spare him, and Jean wouldn't have scolded her; in a way it was like creating something nice with her head and hands. It satisfied, but beauty was something else; Rico glanced at Triela and Hillshire, smiling grimly over a subdued Padanian, and sighed. She idly bounced the football, and kicked.

A few minutes later, handlers and cyborgs alike turned away from Hillshire's on-the-spot cleanup briefing to watch Rico. She was methodically targeting bricks on the wall with the football, fielding it quickly as it bounced away. Having arranged the transport of their prisoners, Jean was walking swiftly back to the group.

"I can't watch," Henrietta moaned, hiding her eyes.

"I can't look away," Triela muttered, "If he hurts her...I'll make your life miserable until you lodge a complaint." Hillshire gritted his teeth and looked away.

Rico peered curiously at Jean's expression. Even without his glasses, she often wished she could understand him better from his face.

"...Stupid. How can you play football on your own?"

The whole team watched as Rico laughed, buried her toes in the ball, and bounced it off the wall to Jean, who sent it back it her general direction. Her feet bounced on the pavement, her hips turned, her eyes talked with her body. To Triela and to Henrietta, she spoke with her pain, her joy and her body, that she was alive. Section 2 watched in silence as Jean kicked the ball back to her, and the two began an inpromptu football exercise against the wall.

"Your sister. Didn't she play football..?" Ferro whispered, clutching Jean's discarded jacket. Jose shook his head in wonder.

"It was me who played with her. Jean always had something else to do, right up until she died." He watched the growing spirit in Jean's eyes, the faint smile. Rico's joyously unfettered laugh, as if it had always been waiting for freedom.


	3. Haunted

___I said_we were going to take losses."

The day after the elimination of his family's murderer, Jean was celebrating alone in his flat with a bottle of whiskey. Save for a loss of ocular focus, his demeanor was as it was known; his shades lay where they had been knocked from his desk.

"I never wanted to feel satisfied, I wanted to destroy. Killed Dante...but you should've taken him. You'd have turned him into living ravioli...nothing we couldn't have done. Nothing.

"You never did feel a thing. Maybe some rubbish over sunshine and paintings, but nothing real. Now you're…a broken machine. Senseless."

"Yes! Senseless, Sir"

Jean's glass fell to the carpet. From behind, he felt Rico's arms encircle his waist.

"No. You don't have a soul, not of your own–just get out!"

"What's a soul, Mr Jean? What's it for?"

"I'm ordering you; _vaffa'nbagno_!" The arms were retracted. Jean heard a pistol cocked, turned. "_No_."

"Ick I caushe you pain, I'm nuu ushe, shir."

"Don't. No, what does it matter–No, don't!" The image of Rico obligingly removed her CZ 75 from her mouth. Hair shining, shirt and pants an accustomed grey, eyes honestly perplexed. "If _you're_ here for revenge–can't you see you've got it?"

"But why are you sad, Mr Jean? When they blew up Angelica, you said I was good for not feeling so much. I never saw that you felt anything much before."

"That's because you're stupid. Two years since Sophia died, and the feeling that's left could smash this whole country into the sea." Jean fell back against the French window, and closed his eyes. Rico stared up at him.

"I needed a tool–Enrica needed a tool. Not some pathetic clinging replacement; she could always rely on Jose. I made her a spirit of vengeance that needed death more than clothes, or choices–you're all that the bomb left of her. A killing machine I could never care for–I needed that. I could hurt you, like I hurt her, again and again. You'd never blame me. No matter what we had to do, you'd always smile like she did.

"But you're dead. Thought I'd just find another kid in a hospital...but they'd give me some simpering 2nd Gen teenager now. Barely more than a human. Not you."

Jean eyes opened. The image of Rico was gone–something was tapping at the window. A small girl, hair shining under the muck and weed. Her right arm, eye, and some of her chest were gone, her forehead rhythmically swaying into the glass. Her mouth was hanging open in innocent surprise.

Fumbling with the keys to the window, Jean hauled Rico into the room, in a splatter of riverwater. Snapping orders into his cellphone, he ripped up his tablecloth to bind her wound, tersely ordering her not to speak.

"Did you hear...?" He finally got out.

"I didn't really understand it, Mr Jean...but it feels warm. Will they give me another body? I messed this one up bad..."

"Always. You're my perfect weapon, no matter what."


	4. The game

The sniper waited, in the bare room; with the little time he had left. Kneeling to the side of a window like any other, the SIG-SG laid across it, blinds down. Without distinguishable noise, the car was turning onto the crowded avenue far below; he swallowed, kept hold of his breath, and lowered his eye. The world was under glass; silent and still.

A hole popped out of a blackened windscreen. The sniper picked out a face in his scope, and shifted his aim, before there was a noise in his head. He pulled the rifle back, as a round crashed through the window–right side near the floor, he noticed, as he wondered if he was going to be sick.

In a similarly bare apartment on the same street, Rico grinned as the finance minister's car sped away. She aimed and fired again, blasting chips from a doorframe. Her heart raced, but her breathing was rhythmic, as she stared through her sights.

"Poor work. He'll be on the move, lower floors–" As Jean spoke, Rico saw a dark shape reach from a second window, over the faintly buzzing crowd–she fired quickly, the shape vanished.

"Two shots–he's located us. Move, no doors, _now_." Puzzled for a second, Rico quickly smiled, hefted her Draganov, and shoulder charged the thin apartment wall. A shot whipped into the room even as she moved, smashing the sink behind her. Bursting into the next apartment, Rico went straight through the far wall, and collapsed beyond it; another bullet cracked above her head. Three rooms back, Jean was on the floor, speaking tersely into his radio.

Rico's face grew hot in the silence, as she realised that the window was covered, and her shoulder almost split. Ground forces could flush the Padinian out with a few casualties; but she would have failed, and disappointed Mr Jean.

Rico suddenly smiled again. The Padinian had been hidden in an apartment block built on a right hand corner. Her own block was actually next to it, as the street curved round. Mr Jean had told her never to take a 400m shot when you could get as close as 50m–or closer. At the corners of the buildings the distance might almost be jumpable...she backing into the corridor, and set off at a dead run.

* * *

The sniper had observed Rico bursting through the walls, without having time to question it. Either she would stay on the floor, or retreat into the building; he had room to breathe. Leaving the SIG in the window, he crawled to the stairs, before racing down them, drawing his beretta as he went. The enemy's second shot had clipped his left arm and hurt like anything. Police would be in the lobby, he needed a third floor window, an alley with a skip, and he could _live_–

His next conscious thought, ten second later, was that he was shot. Spinning, slumping down as if tired, raising his gun without thought, shot again.

"_Dios_...I, I...blondie. You. Here...? Smiling...why the hell are you smiling?" Something wet dripped from his cheek. "You're sorry. Think this is some game...I don't want to die."

Rico knelt by the terrorist, taking in his thratchy dark hair, his soft young face.

"But you've got to. Won't you be happy because you're better at sniping than me?"

The boy with the gun couldn't remember why he had to kill for people someplace else who were alive. But it didn't feel too bad to be better than the strange blonde girl who was waiting with him for death.


	5. Friendship

Rico had been studying a child's watercolour, when her partner shrieked and fired. Glancing in panic at the dying gunman who had appeared behind them, Rico dashed down the corridor, burst into the classroom, fired-fired-fired. None of the Padanians got a shot off.

As the blindfolded primary schoolers began to scream and cry from the floor, Rico sighed, and looked back at Henrietta. She smiled back as people do who have killed and remain alive, SMG dangling from one hand.

"Thank you, 'Etta. I hope Mr Jean isn't mad that I messed up."

"Rico–you just need more focus, lots more, so you won't die. We've got to make sure that our missions don't fail."

"Humph." Rico pouted; as the girls laughed together, Section II men jogged past to rescue the hostages. Henrietta sighed in relief as they left, then ran outside to Jose with his open hands and gentle words. Jean turned his head from Rico's pitifully hopeful face. As Henrietta blushed at Jose's feet, longing for more and closer, she glanced to Rico with a pang in the heart.

* * *

"...I think you chipped a tooth there...oooo." Henrietta clucked over Rico's bleeding cheek with her hanky. "It's just too much; really."

"I just can't get my time on the course down low enough. Mr Jean said I've _got_ to try harder."

"Mr Jean. Well, honestly, he's..."

Rico shyly glanced down, hiding the happiness in her eyes at the mention of Jean's name. A hot nub of Conditioning balanced on Henrietta's tongue.

"'Etta?" She swallowed.

"I suppose he's trying to make sure you can do well on all the missions."

"Oh, yes! I'll definitely try hard. If it works, Mr Jean might even say I'm _adequate_–" Henrietta put her hand on Rico's shoulder.

"_I_ don't think you're adequate–you're cool, Rico, really cool. You're the best shot, and so fiery; you don't ever give up."

"Thank you!" It was a plain smile, a mere reflection of the joy both of them knew in one place, but still bright, "You're really nice too; last week at that school hostage mission you even protected me."

"I suppose we're best friends, then?"

"Ooo. Mmm-hmm!" With the awe in her face, as if friendship were a Rembrandt painting or a flower, Rico quietly blew a wave of happiness through Henrietta's heart.

Days later, when Rico was surprised to see her nose dripping blood onto her dinner, Henrietta passed a tissue, and then sat away from her, in silence. They jogged though their missions, without conversation more or less significant, staying alive.

* * *

There were tears in Rico's eyes when she woke up–and Henrietta was leaning over her bed in the pre-dawn glow. Fuzzily looking up, Rico smiled comfortably.

"Um, It always happens in the mornings, I really don't know why–" She realised Henrietta was not smiling back.

"Rico, is there anything I can help you with?"

"Nah. I always feel so happy." Rico's sated face lay in the in the sun. ""Every morning, when I move, and get out of bed..." She looked at Henrietta; something moved in her blue eyes like a fish.

"I can go anywhere with this body–but 'Etta, if I wake up, and I don't get out of bed, can you please not tell Mr Jose or the doctors, or anyone? I don't know if you can stop me breathing, but if you took me to the window, and threw me down really hard, I'd break to pieces on the terrace by the flowerbeds. Promise?"

"I...I'll try."

"Oh, please! It'll be easier than when Triela threw a target from the top of that carpark. And once I'm gone you won't miss me at all."

"Rico. I tried to kill Claes once, because I thought Jose was in danger. But I feel it was wrong; I don't believe I could do it now. It might be because of the Conditioning; but I know I don't want to hurt you, ever, because we're friends. Maybe I won't feel sad when you die. But I'll miss the way you walk and jump, your face before you fire your gun, and seeing your smile every morning. So stay around, ok?"

Rico slowly nodded, eyes rippling, and both girls smiled together. They were young, and death seemed small and far away.


End file.
